This is a Theft of the Blog Day, during which I encourage you to be the blogging creative class and share your essays and posts on a topic of your choosing.

The sky’s the limit. It can be a news story if you wish. Or it could be a personal story that something else in the news reminded you of, or it could simply be a movie review, an unfinished book with only one chapter, or you can cut and paste something you’ve already written on your own blog that you think should have a wider audience.

Post your essay/post below (alternately, you can email me directly) and if we can get a few, I’ll break each out into its own NewsCut blog post. Don’t worry; I’ll protect you from the trolls.

“There would be times that I would be driving to the dope man and I’d be bawling because I knew that I was worth more and there was something out there that was better,” his guest today said. “Yet I was sick, and I wanted drugs, and I was going to get what I wanted. I went to any length to get it.”

“We are definitely important people. We do bad things, but that doesn’t mean that we’re bad people,” she said. “We’re good people with a bad disease.”

Idea: Do you have a story about wanting to help someone with an addiction — or have you been addicted yourself? What keeps you from giving up?

1,000 Words: Voters thank Susan B. Anthony This is from a quick blog post last night about people in Rochester, NY, who visit Susan B. Anthony’s grave every Election Day and slap “I Voted” stickers on her tombstone.

“I’ve never voted in my life because I left Albania when I was too young to vote. It’s been a long journey to citizenship, I don’t know what emotions it will be, but I know it will be emotional,” a professor at a nearby college said.

Idea: Who inspires you?

Why do girls tend to have more anxiety than boys?The New York Times’ Well column carries the observation of a doctor that the pattern in his practice is unmistakable. Boys he sees are laid back and underachieving. Girls are hyperachieving and anxious. Why? And what can parents do to change it?

If your daughter is the girl sitting in her bedroom looking at other girls’ social media, maybe she shouldn’t be in her bedroom at all. In the typical American household today, when kids go home, they go to their bedrooms and aren’t seen again except perhaps for meals. That’s crazy. A family can’t be a family if the kids spend more time alone in their bedrooms than with their family members. Insist that your daughter, or son, do whatever they’re doing online in a public space: in the kitchen or the living room. There should be nothing in the bedroom except a bed: no TV, no PlayStation, no screens. That’s the official recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.